FW: Philidor: No Class

["Richard Forrest" <richard@plesiosaur.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Forrest [mailto:richard@plesiosaur.com]
Sent: 30 August 2002 23:45
To: TiJaWi@agron.iastate.edu
Subject: RE: Philidor: No Class




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
Williams, Tim
Sent: 30 August 2002 20:09
To: 'dinosaur@usc.edu'
Subject: RE: Philidor: No Class


>I almost fell off my chair with laughter after reading this howler.  How
>much information do you need?  I would aver that it is not the *lack* of
>information that is the problem, but one's ability to understand and digest
>it.

How about soft tissue? How about genes? At a guess, about 95% of the
information we would need to sort out the problem is not preserved in the
fossil record.


>Ah, a Luddite.

No - but someone who make a living by programming computers, and is well
aware of the potential hazard in trusting the output!

>Not so.  Authors make a conscious effort to consolidate or combine
>characters that are developmentally or functionally linked.  The mammalian
>dentition is one good example.

a) not something I've observed in the papers I've read on dinosaur evolution
(though it's not realy my field)
b) not something I've observed in papers on sauropterygia (which is my
field)

>And while we're on the topic, please show me an example of a published
>cladogram that is in defiance of "genetic, ontogentic and biomechanical
>forces".

A cladogram is a way of presenting the output from an analysis of the
relationships found in a set of characaters chosen by the author. HOw can it
say anything about ontogeny, genetic or biomechanics?


Richard Forrest
richard@plesiosaur.com
www.plesiosaur.com